The Mets and Yanks are not dead. The Brewers may be. Max Scherzer is hurt, the MLBPA joins the AFL-CIO, O's drama, a funny apology, more gambling content is coming, mask capitulation, and Big Country.
Always pleased when a Big Country track surfaces in a randomized playlist. Wonderland, the Storm, The Seer, etc... Scotland punches well above its weight class in quality bands.
Yes. Include also Waterboys. I presume everyone in Scotland is in a band or at least some kind of minor league apprenticeship in lieu of compulsory education...? It's an excellent great-music/citizen ration, however they're getting it done.
Whatever respect I had for Hochul has rapidly faded. She clearly made this decision now to blunt any possible criticism from the Trumpist running against her. Even though from what I can tell, she's more of a shoo in for reelection than the Dodgers are to win the NL West. I suppose it would be a bad thing for a leader to lead. Well, I got my booster, I will continue to mask as much as possible, and I will hold my nose to vote for her because the alternative is much worse. (PS: I am also going to have a meal with my family in a restaurant soon to mark my mom's 80th birthday. I am not thrilled about it, but my wife and I figure that we are about as protected as we ever will be, and Mom is fine with it, too. I hope we don't regret it.)
Anyway...METS! deGrom must be so confused. Ten runs? That's more than they scored for him in all of 2020! Not hugely worried about Mad Max, in part because they have Peterson and Williams to spell him, in part because I think at this point in the season, it's about load management. But Starling Marte is also hurt now, a broken finger from that HBP. He's listed as day to day, but I expect he will also go on the IL. Will they call up Vientos? Who knows.
But I am not here to celebrate the Mets. I am here to pile on Jerry Seinfeld. Who said this about the Mets losing first place: “I blame that stupid Trumpet performance. Celebrating in season. We haven’t won anything yet. Bad mojo.” What abject nonsense. Indeed, this almost sounds like the sort of thing a certain sort of Yankees fan might say about celebrating being a wild card team. Never mind that walk in music is a long standing tradition. The Timmy Trumpet moment was meant to be, you know, fun. But I have to add, I was saying Seinfeld wasn't funny long before it was the done thing. Never liked him, never will.
Rays? Honestly, if he had to go anywhere else, I would want him on the Rays, bedeviling (so to speak) the Yankees and Astros for the next four years. My nightmare is he goes to ATL, but while I can see that as a possibility, I don't think they are likely to commit $$$ to anyone over 30.
But when the Mets are doing well and I am obsessing/worrying over them, I have plenty of Mets dreams when I go to bed before the games are over. They tend to play .500 ball in those dreams.
Hocul is working aggressively against guns and for our rights to bodily freedom. I couldn't be happier to have someone who puts a top priority on these issues and is actively working to pass more laws to protect the people of NY.
Is she perfect, no, shes a politician, but she's got her top priorities right, and after living in places like Ohio and Florida over the past decade, I'll be happy to vote for her.
Fair, and I doubt that anyone else who would have run for governor would still be pushing mask mandates. Maybe I have lost a lot of respect for politicians in general for their mishandling of COVID. (Also scientists who don't understand messaging, either.)
Once 40% of the country decided they weren’t going to wear masks , mandates were doomed. Who was expected to enforce these bans after all? It certainly was not the politicians and scientists who advocated for them, it was schmucks like me who as a result of being asked to do a job I never signed up for, was threatened with violence on a weekly if not daily basis.
I don’t know. There was a huge opposition to seatbelts but politicians rammed it through anyway. There should be something similar with masks in some places like public transit or supermarkets.
On the restaurant thing, if you weren't ready to go now, you'd be pretty much writing off ever going to restaurants again. Because I don't know that there is reason to believe things will get any better, Covid-wise, as more time passes.
I am pretty sure we will try to either do takeout or eat outdoors for the most part. But I am also in general over restaurant culture. Or rather, anything fancier than pizza and sushi. Better to cook it and eat it at home.
I like restaurants because I work from home and sometimes need to work in a place with no wifi or distractions. If restaurants and coffee shops stop being safe I’m screwed.
Besides most people don’t have space to entertain. Hence the explosion in restaurant culture over the past few years. We need to stop acting like everyone owns a big detached home.
I live in a tiny apartment, and we have managed to entertain in the past, often. But if we never had another party, I would be fine. My wife, OTOH, misses them. But she also loves cooking. Getting takeout is never her first option. And all of this informs my own feelings about restaurants.
But beyond that, I really want to change how I see food. It is not easy, but I need to stop eating so much, and that would include less trips to restaurants.
I understand why leaders are getting rid of masks. The bar and restaurant industry, huge in NYS, would collapse. But don’t lie about it. Masking everywhere with an N95 is still the best tool we have.
My daughter has a new job at a big local theater (Signature, for those of you who know the DC area) and I got to go to a preview of one of their new shows last night (“No Place To Go” - recommend) … Got home with the Nats at 5-1 and decided not to push my luck and just went to bed. Good call. Anyway, that series of consecutive non-consecutive wins between St. Louis and Washington I mentioned yesterday? That’s over now.
PS I have a soft spot for Big Country because “In a Big Country” was the first song I ever heard on CD… A college buddy brought a CD player with him to school in the fall of 1983, popped in the disc, cranked the volume way up - and SHHHHAH!
PPS So happy for the Baltimore Orioles on the field, but put this Angelos family-on-family crime RIGHT INTO MY VEINS.
I like the mask sign. I think we've reached the point where everybody's got their mask opinion and nobody's going to change the other's mind. A little humor is always welcome.
As an occasional bus rider, I will continue to wear mine. I also think we should thank all the drivers, conductors and other people who make mass-transit work for having taken on the job of enforcing mask rules for these past couple of years, it must have been a bitch to deal with!
And I should mention that here in Albany, I never saw anybody throwing a fit over the bus mask mandate and people helped others out by bringing an extra clean mask or two for fellow riders who forgot theirs until the bus authority started loading the busses with free masks (which they should continue to do).
It will be interesting and incredibly sad, given what we know now about those infected with covid a couple years ago and the devious nature of viruses in general, how well some people are doing in the next 5 or 10 years.
Interesting that the death rate of polio is only a few percent. It wasn't the immediate consequences that made the disease so scary to my grandparents, it was the prospect of long polio. ☹️
What makes the entire mask debate confusing for people is not only the numerous mixed signals from Fauci, politicians and many others. It's the fact that a huge number of people can't (understandably) get their collective heads around wearing a mask while walking into a restaurant only to then be allowed to remove it to eat. I couldn't tell you how many people (most very well educated) I have heard question the wisdom. Almost in unison they mention the invisible covid fighting wall the raises up immediately around your table as you sit down. I totally get the mask confusion. Personally, I'm vaxxed and I wore/wear my mask when I need to. Sadly, it seems this will be around forever, much like the flu.
Yeah, the mess of nuance and trying to balance what is politically possible reminds me of a few times when I've been asked how many ppms are in the drinking water. Sometimes I just don't have the ability to explain at a simple enough level to satisfy them because there is such a huge gulf of understanding.
Two of my teen daughters had Covid last December and luckily had very mild cases. The youngest (14) ended up missing 9 days of school this past spring semester due to other ailments: strep, etc. she had missed a day of school since 3rd grade before Covid and it’s hard not to correlate her apparently weakened immune system with her mild bout of Covid 9 months ago.
My only criticism, purely on a design/message basis, was that the “you do you“ should have been even more ridiculous - I would’ve gone with wearing it over one eye like a pirate.
I commented elsewhere on this very topic, but from June 2020 to June 2021 when Illinois (roughly) had a public mask mandate was the worst year of work in my life. I was threatened on a weekly sometimes daily basis for trying to enforce the mandate. Never again. I thought my respect for the average American couldn’t get any lower after Orange45 was elected, then along comes Covid saying, “hold my beer, chump.”
I'm definitely heading to Amazon Music later to jam out to some Big Country. Thanks for the inspiration Craig! It was inevitable that once we were over "2 weeks to flatten the curve" 3 years later, that the masking policies and implementation that were questionable to begin with would become a big joke. Being that the masks most people are/were wearing don't do very much to begin with and are more of a social acceptance thing/lawsuit avoidance tool than anything else, and couldn't last forever, there was going to be mockery once things returned to normal. NY captured the spirit of the mockery at least. Not saying it's right, but it is reality. And probably helps Hochul with her re-election since the Trumpers would be banging the drums over it in another 50 days or so. God Bless 'Murica.
Awaypitcher.shortname didn’t have anything for an inning. Took something like 35 pitches and 34 were crap. Then in the second, a light came on and he was unhittable. I rarely see such a 180 in a single game.
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The Gottleib statement was the settlement. A trial won’t get Close anything nearly as important. Particularly since damages are so speculative. Admission that the talk show guy was absolutely wrong is a win for the agent.
Like daily housekeeping in hotels and restaurants hiring their own delivery drivers, it went away because of COVID in 2020 and quietly never came back.
Second thought: the only problem with the Close settlement is that it cuts off attorney fees. While I no longer practice, I believe I am obligated to complain when lawyers can’t continue to run up the bill.
Asking not arguing: assuming Gottlieb isn’t paying those fees, doesn’t that just put Close on the hook? If I’m him, that’s money well spent to restore/protect my reputation.
We don't know the terms of the settlement. It probably includes a reasonable attorney's fees clause. If I was Close's counsel, I would have definitely included it in my opening position, because it would have been part of any judgment.
Judge signing (or not) with the Yankees: wouldn’t it be something if it just happens to work out that no other team tops the Yankees’ offer to Judge after the season? We haven’t seen that kind of coincidence before, have we? That said, I don’t even like the Yankees, but I still think it’s nice once in awhile to see a franchise player spend his career with one team. As a Guardians fan, I still can barely believe that we won’t have to wave goodbye to Jose Ramirez after all.
Scherzer on IL: I get the impression that several of the major sports--baseball and football, anyway--are having more trouble than they used to in keeping their stars healthy for the whole season. I’m not sure if there are any comparative analyses of that kind of thing. Maybe it’s just the 24-hour sports news cycle making every pulled muscle more newsworthy, or more big names pushing on into their late 30s or even 40s. Maybe teams, and players, have a greater interest in protecting their investments now that the money is so huge and careers potentially so lengthy.
No masks on the subway: it’s amazing, although perhaps not surprising, that America has made up its collective mind to let the old folks take their chances with Covid so everyone else can get back to normal (normal, that is, except for the incremental dead old folks). And all because wearing masks and, heaven forbid, getting vaccinated is too much of an imposition. As a newly minted old person, I have trouble not taking that kind of personally.
Not just the old folks, since Long COVID is random and can hit anyone. And since there are plenty of people at risk from just pian COVID who aren't old, like the immunocompromised. But yeah, the old folks. We seem not to value being old.
And speaking of that, I can't speak to whether players get hurt more, but Scherzer is at the age where pitching starts to take more and more of a toll if you are not Nolan Ryan or Bartolo Colon.
My wife has had long covid for 2 years. She's in her early 60s; other than covid, in her early 40s health-wise. She pretty much lost her sense of taste and just eats for sustenance anymore.
A couple days ago I saw a comment from someone who said a relative could eat only Cheerios since they recovered (mostly) from covid because everything else tasted horrible, and they weren't sure if that said more about covid or Cheerios.
Agree w/you, TA, on players staying with a team. It's totally, completely from a fan's perspective of course and violates a player's innate right to sell his services competitively. From the aesthetic POV, it never looked right to see Harmon Killebrew play his last season with the Royals. (Yes, the Twins had released him and offered a nice FO job, but he wanted to keep playing - it's the imagery I'm talking about.)
Haha, we didn't even give it a second thought as like 75% of the newsletter is just written like I'd say it out loud and I tend not to examine it too closely.
Not to be confused with a group called "Smith" whose 1969 debut album, confusingly titled, "A Group Called Smith" consisted almost entirely of blues and R&B covers.
Their version of 'Baby It's You' kept the album on the charts for almost 3 months, and remains the best version of the song (this from a huge Beatles fan, and IMO their version doesn't even touch it). I liked it so much I once downloaded their entire album but alas, it turned out that Gayle McCormick's voice really starts to grate on me after a while, and anyway the rest of their covers are not particularly musically interesting.
Should you ever reference them, I would say you'd have to go with "Smith *is* [INSERT DESCRPITION]..." rather than "Smith *are*..."
You know how people say things like we're not properly appreciating the genius that is Ohtani's amazing season? We're not properly appreciating the debacle that is the Twins absolute brain-locking inability to win a game against the Yankees. It is truly unique, bizarre, and feeds into all kinds of "small town boys intimidated by the big city" storylines. It's like some one-sided college rivalry. It's gone on for decades. It's amazing.
Not that much of anyone ever noticed me. And I couldn't have been the only one.
I think, for the most part, that quasi-analysis holds up. The Twins, when they're good, tend to acquire and develop pitchers who don't issue walks or necessarily strike a lot of batters out, but will allow a solo homer. Sort of the Jim Palmer approach: Throw strikes, let the defense do its job. Against most teams, the solo homers don't hurt too much because they have good defense and don't walk many batters. But against the Yankees, it's harder to avoid the walks, so all those homers hurt more. Yankee pitchers tend to strike more batters out, AND prevent walks and homers, and Twins lineups don't often have many power threats. That doesn't explain all of it, but it goes a lot of the way there, I think.
In any case, right now their record since 2002 stands (I think) at 114-39, which means the Yankees would have to lose the next NINE in a row to be as "bad" against the Twins as the 1998 Yankees were against everyone.
As a Red Sox fan I will accept zero complaints from any Yankees fan. Your team at least is still acting like the Yankees, and not a 2nd rate take on the Rays.
From the "We're scraping the bottom of the barrel to find interesting content to write about in this lost season" file at the Washington Post comes an article about swingman Paolo Espino, who could add his name to the list (currently numbering ten) of guys who've pitched over 100 innings in a season but haven't been credited with a win.
He's already at 101 innings, so it's just a matter of seeing if he can finish out the season with an unblemished W column, and perhaps set the record for most innings doing so, currently held by Terry Felton of the 1982 Twins, who tossed 117 1/3 innings while going 0-13, and was never heard from again.
To be fair, even Jesse Dougherty who wrote it essentially admitted on Twitter that he was "watering" this weird list. I like Espino. In a perfect world, he's Craig Stammen 2.0 - coming out of the pen for 2+ innings to keep a losing game close in case the bats decide to start hitting.
Oh, New York. I sort of understand the messaging, as taken in a slightly different light it's still making fun of the people who didn't understand what masks are for. It would have been enough to post "Thanks for riding the MTA. Masks are recommended but optional." ... however the silliness might let the masses exhale a little bit. Oh shit, they should be wearing masks when they do so.
Big Country still gets a lot of play in my car, particularly Where The Rose Is Sown and Steeltown, which would also be solid adds to your Coast to Coast playlist. RIP, Stuart Adamson.
This guy is in a league of his own, frankly. Ohtani gets a lot of well-deserved accolades for his two-way abilities but where is the coverage for the modern-day Bo Jackson? This dude went from being a world-famous soccer star from Spain, to working his way up through the ranks of a sport that isn't even played in his home country at age 40 and eventually smacking two home runs for the Giants. Incredible.
Conservative Evangelical Christians who wanted Tim Tebow to get a free socialist handout participation trophy from the Mets should take note. Villar showed you can actually earn your way up the ranks with competent play rather than relying solely on your name and the fact that you pray. Villars are basically gods in the Lord of the Rings universe, so those Tebow fans should like this guy anyway.
Am I missing an inside joke here or something? David Villar is 25, was born in Atlanta and raised in Florida and got drafted in the 11th round in 2018. I can't find any reference to a David Villar who plays soccer. Diego maybe? He's Argentine, not Spanish. I'm just confused.
David Villar is actually 40 and was born in Langreo, Spain. He was a star on the Spanish national team and played for Barcelona and Atlético Madrid before joining New York City FC, one of many international soccer legends to transfer to an MLS team over the years in order to sharpen their skills against the best in the world in the league that has become the pinnacle of professional soccer.
After a career like that, and at his age, to then try an entirely new sport and not only excel, but rise through the minor leagues up to the Giants so quickly after only retiring from soccer in 2020 - and now smacking two homers in a single game - is amazing.
Always pleased when a Big Country track surfaces in a randomized playlist. Wonderland, the Storm, The Seer, etc... Scotland punches well above its weight class in quality bands.
Yes. Include also Waterboys. I presume everyone in Scotland is in a band or at least some kind of minor league apprenticeship in lieu of compulsory education...? It's an excellent great-music/citizen ration, however they're getting it done.
Whatever respect I had for Hochul has rapidly faded. She clearly made this decision now to blunt any possible criticism from the Trumpist running against her. Even though from what I can tell, she's more of a shoo in for reelection than the Dodgers are to win the NL West. I suppose it would be a bad thing for a leader to lead. Well, I got my booster, I will continue to mask as much as possible, and I will hold my nose to vote for her because the alternative is much worse. (PS: I am also going to have a meal with my family in a restaurant soon to mark my mom's 80th birthday. I am not thrilled about it, but my wife and I figure that we are about as protected as we ever will be, and Mom is fine with it, too. I hope we don't regret it.)
Anyway...METS! deGrom must be so confused. Ten runs? That's more than they scored for him in all of 2020! Not hugely worried about Mad Max, in part because they have Peterson and Williams to spell him, in part because I think at this point in the season, it's about load management. But Starling Marte is also hurt now, a broken finger from that HBP. He's listed as day to day, but I expect he will also go on the IL. Will they call up Vientos? Who knows.
But I am not here to celebrate the Mets. I am here to pile on Jerry Seinfeld. Who said this about the Mets losing first place: “I blame that stupid Trumpet performance. Celebrating in season. We haven’t won anything yet. Bad mojo.” What abject nonsense. Indeed, this almost sounds like the sort of thing a certain sort of Yankees fan might say about celebrating being a wild card team. Never mind that walk in music is a long standing tradition. The Timmy Trumpet moment was meant to be, you know, fun. But I have to add, I was saying Seinfeld wasn't funny long before it was the done thing. Never liked him, never will.
Rays? Honestly, if he had to go anywhere else, I would want him on the Rays, bedeviling (so to speak) the Yankees and Astros for the next four years. My nightmare is he goes to ATL, but while I can see that as a possibility, I don't think they are likely to commit $$$ to anyone over 30.
But when the Mets are doing well and I am obsessing/worrying over them, I have plenty of Mets dreams when I go to bed before the games are over. They tend to play .500 ball in those dreams.
I think he was probably addled by the paisley on the sleeves of his $500 letter jacket.
Hocul is working aggressively against guns and for our rights to bodily freedom. I couldn't be happier to have someone who puts a top priority on these issues and is actively working to pass more laws to protect the people of NY.
Is she perfect, no, shes a politician, but she's got her top priorities right, and after living in places like Ohio and Florida over the past decade, I'll be happy to vote for her.
I can't demand perfection. I can demand rigid adherences to proven scientific principles. Though I don't know if I will get that, either.
At least it’s not Cuomo.
Fair, and I doubt that anyone else who would have run for governor would still be pushing mask mandates. Maybe I have lost a lot of respect for politicians in general for their mishandling of COVID. (Also scientists who don't understand messaging, either.)
Once 40% of the country decided they weren’t going to wear masks , mandates were doomed. Who was expected to enforce these bans after all? It certainly was not the politicians and scientists who advocated for them, it was schmucks like me who as a result of being asked to do a job I never signed up for, was threatened with violence on a weekly if not daily basis.
I don’t know. There was a huge opposition to seatbelts but politicians rammed it through anyway. There should be something similar with masks in some places like public transit or supermarkets.
On the restaurant thing, if you weren't ready to go now, you'd be pretty much writing off ever going to restaurants again. Because I don't know that there is reason to believe things will get any better, Covid-wise, as more time passes.
I am pretty sure we will try to either do takeout or eat outdoors for the most part. But I am also in general over restaurant culture. Or rather, anything fancier than pizza and sushi. Better to cook it and eat it at home.
I like restaurants because I work from home and sometimes need to work in a place with no wifi or distractions. If restaurants and coffee shops stop being safe I’m screwed.
Besides most people don’t have space to entertain. Hence the explosion in restaurant culture over the past few years. We need to stop acting like everyone owns a big detached home.
I live in a tiny apartment, and we have managed to entertain in the past, often. But if we never had another party, I would be fine. My wife, OTOH, misses them. But she also loves cooking. Getting takeout is never her first option. And all of this informs my own feelings about restaurants.
But beyond that, I really want to change how I see food. It is not easy, but I need to stop eating so much, and that would include less trips to restaurants.
I understand why leaders are getting rid of masks. The bar and restaurant industry, huge in NYS, would collapse. But don’t lie about it. Masking everywhere with an N95 is still the best tool we have.
My daughter has a new job at a big local theater (Signature, for those of you who know the DC area) and I got to go to a preview of one of their new shows last night (“No Place To Go” - recommend) … Got home with the Nats at 5-1 and decided not to push my luck and just went to bed. Good call. Anyway, that series of consecutive non-consecutive wins between St. Louis and Washington I mentioned yesterday? That’s over now.
PS I have a soft spot for Big Country because “In a Big Country” was the first song I ever heard on CD… A college buddy brought a CD player with him to school in the fall of 1983, popped in the disc, cranked the volume way up - and SHHHHAH!
PPS So happy for the Baltimore Orioles on the field, but put this Angelos family-on-family crime RIGHT INTO MY VEINS.
I like the mask sign. I think we've reached the point where everybody's got their mask opinion and nobody's going to change the other's mind. A little humor is always welcome.
As an occasional bus rider, I will continue to wear mine. I also think we should thank all the drivers, conductors and other people who make mass-transit work for having taken on the job of enforcing mask rules for these past couple of years, it must have been a bitch to deal with!
And I should mention that here in Albany, I never saw anybody throwing a fit over the bus mask mandate and people helped others out by bringing an extra clean mask or two for fellow riders who forgot theirs until the bus authority started loading the busses with free masks (which they should continue to do).
It will be interesting and incredibly sad, given what we know now about those infected with covid a couple years ago and the devious nature of viruses in general, how well some people are doing in the next 5 or 10 years.
I'm afraid all too many will not fare well.
Interesting that the death rate of polio is only a few percent. It wasn't the immediate consequences that made the disease so scary to my grandparents, it was the prospect of long polio. ☹️
What makes the entire mask debate confusing for people is not only the numerous mixed signals from Fauci, politicians and many others. It's the fact that a huge number of people can't (understandably) get their collective heads around wearing a mask while walking into a restaurant only to then be allowed to remove it to eat. I couldn't tell you how many people (most very well educated) I have heard question the wisdom. Almost in unison they mention the invisible covid fighting wall the raises up immediately around your table as you sit down. I totally get the mask confusion. Personally, I'm vaxxed and I wore/wear my mask when I need to. Sadly, it seems this will be around forever, much like the flu.
Yeah, the mess of nuance and trying to balance what is politically possible reminds me of a few times when I've been asked how many ppms are in the drinking water. Sometimes I just don't have the ability to explain at a simple enough level to satisfy them because there is such a huge gulf of understanding.
Two of my teen daughters had Covid last December and luckily had very mild cases. The youngest (14) ended up missing 9 days of school this past spring semester due to other ailments: strep, etc. she had missed a day of school since 3rd grade before Covid and it’s hard not to correlate her apparently weakened immune system with her mild bout of Covid 9 months ago.
I'm not hitting the like for this comment only because I don't like it at all.
My only criticism, purely on a design/message basis, was that the “you do you“ should have been even more ridiculous - I would’ve gone with wearing it over one eye like a pirate.
Good point!
This would have been hilarious.
I commented elsewhere on this very topic, but from June 2020 to June 2021 when Illinois (roughly) had a public mask mandate was the worst year of work in my life. I was threatened on a weekly sometimes daily basis for trying to enforce the mandate. Never again. I thought my respect for the average American couldn’t get any lower after Orange45 was elected, then along comes Covid saying, “hold my beer, chump.”
The last few years have done nothing to alter my low opinion of people in general. Humans are mostly ambulatory garbage.
Sadly it's made me a lot less generous because I'd feel like a chump helping out a piece of utter trash.
I'm definitely heading to Amazon Music later to jam out to some Big Country. Thanks for the inspiration Craig! It was inevitable that once we were over "2 weeks to flatten the curve" 3 years later, that the masking policies and implementation that were questionable to begin with would become a big joke. Being that the masks most people are/were wearing don't do very much to begin with and are more of a social acceptance thing/lawsuit avoidance tool than anything else, and couldn't last forever, there was going to be mockery once things returned to normal. NY captured the spirit of the mockery at least. Not saying it's right, but it is reality. And probably helps Hochul with her re-election since the Trumpers would be banging the drums over it in another 50 days or so. God Bless 'Murica.
Awaypitcher.shortname didn’t have anything for an inning. Took something like 35 pitches and 34 were crap. Then in the second, a light came on and he was unhittable. I rarely see such a 180 in a single game.
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The Gottleib statement was the settlement. A trial won’t get Close anything nearly as important. Particularly since damages are so speculative. Admission that the talk show guy was absolutely wrong is a win for the agent.
I demand the return of Players' Weekend in the name of the Barves social media team.
What happened to that? I wasn't a fan - Yankees should never have names on their uniforms, by gum! - but it seemed to be popular.
Like daily housekeeping in hotels and restaurants hiring their own delivery drivers, it went away because of COVID in 2020 and quietly never came back.
Second thought: the only problem with the Close settlement is that it cuts off attorney fees. While I no longer practice, I believe I am obligated to complain when lawyers can’t continue to run up the bill.
Asking not arguing: assuming Gottlieb isn’t paying those fees, doesn’t that just put Close on the hook? If I’m him, that’s money well spent to restore/protect my reputation.
It would be odd for in house counsel to handle defamation litigation. The same doctor doesn’t deliver babies and remove tonsils.
We don't know the terms of the settlement. It probably includes a reasonable attorney's fees clause. If I was Close's counsel, I would have definitely included it in my opening position, because it would have been part of any judgment.
Judge signing (or not) with the Yankees: wouldn’t it be something if it just happens to work out that no other team tops the Yankees’ offer to Judge after the season? We haven’t seen that kind of coincidence before, have we? That said, I don’t even like the Yankees, but I still think it’s nice once in awhile to see a franchise player spend his career with one team. As a Guardians fan, I still can barely believe that we won’t have to wave goodbye to Jose Ramirez after all.
Scherzer on IL: I get the impression that several of the major sports--baseball and football, anyway--are having more trouble than they used to in keeping their stars healthy for the whole season. I’m not sure if there are any comparative analyses of that kind of thing. Maybe it’s just the 24-hour sports news cycle making every pulled muscle more newsworthy, or more big names pushing on into their late 30s or even 40s. Maybe teams, and players, have a greater interest in protecting their investments now that the money is so huge and careers potentially so lengthy.
No masks on the subway: it’s amazing, although perhaps not surprising, that America has made up its collective mind to let the old folks take their chances with Covid so everyone else can get back to normal (normal, that is, except for the incremental dead old folks). And all because wearing masks and, heaven forbid, getting vaccinated is too much of an imposition. As a newly minted old person, I have trouble not taking that kind of personally.
Not just the old folks, since Long COVID is random and can hit anyone. And since there are plenty of people at risk from just pian COVID who aren't old, like the immunocompromised. But yeah, the old folks. We seem not to value being old.
And speaking of that, I can't speak to whether players get hurt more, but Scherzer is at the age where pitching starts to take more and more of a toll if you are not Nolan Ryan or Bartolo Colon.
My wife has had long covid for 2 years. She's in her early 60s; other than covid, in her early 40s health-wise. She pretty much lost her sense of taste and just eats for sustenance anymore.
Not going to click on the heart. This is what is called on Disqus sites a "sad upvote." Hope she finds her sense of taste again, and soon.
That sucks, I'm so sorry to hear that.
A couple days ago I saw a comment from someone who said a relative could eat only Cheerios since they recovered (mostly) from covid because everything else tasted horrible, and they weren't sure if that said more about covid or Cheerios.
Agree w/you, TA, on players staying with a team. It's totally, completely from a fan's perspective of course and violates a player's innate right to sell his services competitively. From the aesthetic POV, it never looked right to see Harmon Killebrew play his last season with the Royals. (Yes, the Twins had released him and offered a nice FO job, but he wanted to keep playing - it's the imagery I'm talking about.)
Curious if you and your copyeditor debated "The Smiths are one of my favorite all-time bands" vs. "The Smiths is one of my favorite all-time bands."
Haha, we didn't even give it a second thought as like 75% of the newsletter is just written like I'd say it out loud and I tend not to examine it too closely.
[Editor: I feel so respected]
I'm curious which are your favorite part-time bands?
Not to be confused with a group called "Smith" whose 1969 debut album, confusingly titled, "A Group Called Smith" consisted almost entirely of blues and R&B covers.
Their version of 'Baby It's You' kept the album on the charts for almost 3 months, and remains the best version of the song (this from a huge Beatles fan, and IMO their version doesn't even touch it). I liked it so much I once downloaded their entire album but alas, it turned out that Gayle McCormick's voice really starts to grate on me after a while, and anyway the rest of their covers are not particularly musically interesting.
Should you ever reference them, I would say you'd have to go with "Smith *is* [INSERT DESCRPITION]..." rather than "Smith *are*..."
And do you capitalize "The"? For example, is it "The Beatles" or the "Beatles"?
You know how people say things like we're not properly appreciating the genius that is Ohtani's amazing season? We're not properly appreciating the debacle that is the Twins absolute brain-locking inability to win a game against the Yankees. It is truly unique, bizarre, and feeds into all kinds of "small town boys intimidated by the big city" storylines. It's like some one-sided college rivalry. It's gone on for decades. It's amazing.
So tempted to go to Wikipedia and see if anyone has changed the entry to read "Owners: New York Yankees."
There have been lots of articles and commentary about that, actually. I noticed the trend as long ago as 2009:
http://www.boyofsummer.net/2009/05/why-yankees-dominate-minnesotatwins.html
Not that much of anyone ever noticed me. And I couldn't have been the only one.
I think, for the most part, that quasi-analysis holds up. The Twins, when they're good, tend to acquire and develop pitchers who don't issue walks or necessarily strike a lot of batters out, but will allow a solo homer. Sort of the Jim Palmer approach: Throw strikes, let the defense do its job. Against most teams, the solo homers don't hurt too much because they have good defense and don't walk many batters. But against the Yankees, it's harder to avoid the walks, so all those homers hurt more. Yankee pitchers tend to strike more batters out, AND prevent walks and homers, and Twins lineups don't often have many power threats. That doesn't explain all of it, but it goes a lot of the way there, I think.
In any case, right now their record since 2002 stands (I think) at 114-39, which means the Yankees would have to lose the next NINE in a row to be as "bad" against the Twins as the 1998 Yankees were against everyone.
A) Love that Big Country album. Wonderland is one of my favorite songs.
B) I have started my mourning for Judge already
As a Red Sox fan I will accept zero complaints from any Yankees fan. Your team at least is still acting like the Yankees, and not a 2nd rate take on the Rays.
From the "We're scraping the bottom of the barrel to find interesting content to write about in this lost season" file at the Washington Post comes an article about swingman Paolo Espino, who could add his name to the list (currently numbering ten) of guys who've pitched over 100 innings in a season but haven't been credited with a win.
He's already at 101 innings, so it's just a matter of seeing if he can finish out the season with an unblemished W column, and perhaps set the record for most innings doing so, currently held by Terry Felton of the 1982 Twins, who tossed 117 1/3 innings while going 0-13, and was never heard from again.
To be fair, even Jesse Dougherty who wrote it essentially admitted on Twitter that he was "watering" this weird list. I like Espino. In a perfect world, he's Craig Stammen 2.0 - coming out of the pen for 2+ innings to keep a losing game close in case the bats decide to start hitting.
Without ESPN Americans would probably still be ignorant to the joy of watching Australian Rules Football, so there is that.
Would much prefer living in the alternate reality where ESPN had filled their schedule with worldwide sports of varying obscurity.
Earth-Ocho?
So we get to see things like Track & Field on a regular basis, instead of every four years when the Olympics come around.
Oh, New York. I sort of understand the messaging, as taken in a slightly different light it's still making fun of the people who didn't understand what masks are for. It would have been enough to post "Thanks for riding the MTA. Masks are recommended but optional." ... however the silliness might let the masses exhale a little bit. Oh shit, they should be wearing masks when they do so.
Big Country still gets a lot of play in my car, particularly Where The Rose Is Sown and Steeltown, which would also be solid adds to your Coast to Coast playlist. RIP, Stuart Adamson.
"Shorts on backward, shorts on backwards." --Roy Williams on Doug Gottlieb
I am guessing Gottlieb's theft of a credit card, for which he had to leave Notre Dame for Oklahoma State, was excused as a youthful indiscretion.
Now in his late 40's, he perhaps should claim this crapfest was a sign of early onset dementia.
How he keeps a job is mind-boggling.
The Giants player who hit two homers is David Villar.
Lolol 5:30am autopilot strikes again. Like, it took me two years to get the right Dozier whenever his name came up.
This guy is in a league of his own, frankly. Ohtani gets a lot of well-deserved accolades for his two-way abilities but where is the coverage for the modern-day Bo Jackson? This dude went from being a world-famous soccer star from Spain, to working his way up through the ranks of a sport that isn't even played in his home country at age 40 and eventually smacking two home runs for the Giants. Incredible.
Conservative Evangelical Christians who wanted Tim Tebow to get a free socialist handout participation trophy from the Mets should take note. Villar showed you can actually earn your way up the ranks with competent play rather than relying solely on your name and the fact that you pray. Villars are basically gods in the Lord of the Rings universe, so those Tebow fans should like this guy anyway.
Am I missing an inside joke here or something? David Villar is 25, was born in Atlanta and raised in Florida and got drafted in the 11th round in 2018. I can't find any reference to a David Villar who plays soccer. Diego maybe? He's Argentine, not Spanish. I'm just confused.
David Villar is actually 40 and was born in Langreo, Spain. He was a star on the Spanish national team and played for Barcelona and Atlético Madrid before joining New York City FC, one of many international soccer legends to transfer to an MLS team over the years in order to sharpen their skills against the best in the world in the league that has become the pinnacle of professional soccer.
After a career like that, and at his age, to then try an entirely new sport and not only excel, but rise through the minor leagues up to the Giants so quickly after only retiring from soccer in 2020 - and now smacking two homers in a single game - is amazing.
Right. I read one of your other comments and realized you had changed your avatar, or I'd have known better than to ask.